From Norfolk to Trafalgar

Ben Luckett, born in Overy Staithe in Norfolk, sails with Nelson in Boreas on his challenging commission in the West Indies in 1784. Returning home he joins the frigate Gorgon (1791) in which Lieutenant Governor King is returning to his post on Norfolk Island. Working in this colonial convict outpost he marries a pretty, young convict girl and in due course returns to her home in Buckinghamshire. He is given the chance to return to sea with Captain Fremantle in the Mediterranean aboard Inconstant. The Wynne family is evacuated into Inconstant from Italy and Ben witnesses the Captain and Betsey Wynne's 5-month shipboard romance and marriage, followed by Nelson’s attack on Cadiz and the Battle of Tenerife (1797). Home again, he is invited by King (1799) to serve in New South Wales as Governor's Coxswain where he experiences further dramas in the young colony. After five years he returns home in time to rejoin Fremantle commanding the 96 gun Neptune, third in line at the battle of Trafalgar.